Interesting that the CIA conclusion for a device very similar to the article is "Not recommended for operational use due to its discomfort and very slight gain in speed over that of a swimmer equipped with fins."
Toss a battery on it though and what does it look like then? Perhaps you're able to augment a human's ability to traverse longer distances more quickly. That's tech that didn't really exist back then!
Brings a new meaning to "Charlie don't surf". At this point though, you have to pretty much imagine that the military has researched any and every mode/method/means of achieving the goals of a mission. I'm sure roller blades and skateboards have been considered at some point as well.
They have a .fr domain and a showroom in Cannes, France but the company is headquarted in Italy:
PARITET SRL, Via Giovanni da Cermenate 3, 22063 Cantù (CO) Italy
Also, the French version of the website is riddled with enormous errors, like "For traveling light" translated as "Pour voyager lumière", which does not make any sense and isn't even grammatically correct (the proper translation would be "Pour voyager léger").
The whole thing does not inspire a lot of confidence. Is the product real?
That's a really odd mistranslation, given the Italian words for lightweight and light source are as different as in french (leggero/a vs luce). Looks like it was translated directly
from the English content.
> The nominal mode enables motion through the water at 3.6 km/h, and for speed-seekers, the SEABIKE can reach a maximum of 7.9 km/h – much faster than normal swimming speeds or even flipper-assisted swimming.
Main difference is recruiting much larger muscles, so at some point most humans will be faster over a longer period with the widget. Let Phelps train with this for a couple months and he'd be faster. Although probably sad, because he likes swimming.
Not really. Most serious lap swimmers can do a kilometer every 20 minutes sustainably, akin to a marathon runner's pace (Sprint pace would be 100m/minute, with 50m/minute being what you would see in the fast lane of most recreational pools). So 3.6 kph isn't all that different, maybe a little faster than average but I assume they were also using a better-than-average bicycle person when doing the test.
There real advantage here is that you can use leg muscle. Distance swimming is all about upper body muscles, with legs being the afterburners only really used for sprinting. This machine would invert that arrangement.
Given that he optimized his training for swimming and not cycling I think he might do better with fins. His top speed of 7.2 - 9.6 km/h is freestyling without fins. He reached somewhere around 13 km/h using a Lunocet monofin.
At the 2020 Miami International Boat Show, Philadelphia-based Sharrow Marine introduced the culmination of a seven-year research and development project called the MX-1 Sharrow Propeller. Unlike every prop that's come before it, rather than blades, the MX-1 has loops of metal attached to the hub.
How does this change the dynamic? In a nutshell, much of a prop's inefficiency can be blamed on the blade tips, where vortices and cavitation (commonly called tip vortex cavitation, or TVC) form, creating turbulence and sapping efficiency. Simply put, the loops on a Sharrow have no tips. The net result is an efficiency gain of between 9% and 15%. But just as important, eliminating the cavitation vastly reduces vibrations and noise and makes for a smoother, quieter boat ride.
Company president Greg Sharrow tells us that the development of the MX-1 can be credited to music videos.
"I was trying to solve the problem of reducing unwanted noise from drones while filming live music productions," he says. "I've always thought it would be cool to use a drone to get cameras closer to subjects and film them from onstage, but you can't use drones for music broadcasts because they're too noisy. I knew that most of the noise comes from the blade tips and is caused, in part, by tip vortices. So, I'd have to find a way to eliminate them."
I think for water, what you really want is to _breed_ cavitation, but in a way where the jets created by bubble collapse are arranged to face opposite your desired direction of motion. Kind of like Astrophage.
Good question! Boat motors spin a lot faster than the "Underwater bicycle" propeller would so perhaps it's not as beneficial here, but would be interesting to try.
Utility scale wind turbines are already about 50% efficient which is close to the theoretical limit of 59% (Betz limit). The loopy blades would be more expensive to manufacture and transport so there's a trade-off and it's not obvious that efficiency would win.
"Seabike says the prop turns slowly enough that you can safely use it at the local pool"
Felt a bit iffy about this claim. But looking at the research it seems cadence lowers normally when cycling under water.[0] Fun device. I wonder which pedals would be best for barefoot riding(?). Maybe those strapped ones fix riders like to use.
They should also sell a model that includes a pair of fake feet that sort of kick at the surface to complete the illusion that you’re a freak of nature.
Cool. More like an underwater 'monocycle', though. Make it into a full body struct in Y shape acting as kind of both 'guidon' and secondary propulsion axis -- more blades, an underwater tricycle. :)
> There are two main types of single-wheeled vehicles. In
a unicycle, the rider sits above the wheel. These vehicles
are recognizable by most people. Less well known is the
monocycle, where the rider sits inside the wheel.
I swim because I enjoy it, not because I'm trying to get somewhere fast.
This seems awkward and I bet you have to use your arms just to counterbalance the twist you'd get on each 'stroke' of the leg.
So even though I think it's goofy, I bet I'd like whoever came up with this. Someone who put a ton of effort into building something they thought would be interesting despite a thousand people telling them it's goofy.
> I swim because I enjoy it, not because I'm trying to get somewhere fast.
I run because I enjoy it, not because I’m trying to get somewhere fast. But I also bike because I enjoy it, not because I’m trying to get somewhere fast.
You seem to assume that because this thing is faster, it must automatically be less enjoyable. That’s not the case for bikes, why should it be the case here? In my opinion it sounds fun, and would probably be enjoyable.
Maybe not necessarily "faster" but there is an idea that adding any kind of technology should be avoided for recreational activities. For example, you can mountain bike with a fully-suspended e-bike, or you can struggle with a hardtail or even a road bike. Different kinds of fun, but in the former you'll wonder if it's the technology doing all the work.
That's a fair point. My (untested) assumption would be that it would be cumbersome and weird, and I wouldn't be 'swimming'.
If I were to guess at their motivations, it might be 'what could make me go faster in the water and also be enjoyable'? I'd try it out of curiosity, sure, but I'm pretty sure it wouldn't last beyond the novelty for me.
Running does make pedestrian locomotion more tolerable. Save me some money versus using electric scooters though I think electric scooters are still faster.
I come from family of scuba divers, and the scuba divers are a perfect market for this I think - pretty rich, pretty lazy and have to cover a lot of distance underwater
The real question here is about efficiency, not speed. If this does in fact propel divers more efficiently than traditional fins, it could be something useful in extending dive times without the battery limitations of a sea scooter. Otherwise it's just a gimmick.
From the looks of the scuba diving video, it looks worse. There's way more leg movement and it looks less controlled (and more likely to damage corals/kick up sand from the bottom) than slow finning.
Given the number of times I've been kicked in the face by another person's fins while scuba diving, I wouldn't want to be anywhere near someone using one of these.
That said this certainly has its place. There are lots of use cases for wanting to swim more quickly through the water, where precise control is less important and where you aren't right next to fragile life.
Foil boards are getting semi-popular for kiteboarding. They can be self-powered as well using a jumping motion. They also make e-foils with small electric props.
Anything you choose will be cumbersome because you can't create friction on the water (well...), your ability to move is based on your ability to move water around you.
There are solutions that leverage a pair of catamarans and a track system, or a prop. These tend to move very slowly, much slower than a canoe or kayak. The water wheel style systems seem to move faster, but you can just get a pedal kayak and will be the fastest human powered craft on the water.
I've always wondered why nobody has created something that looks like a catamaran with two rowing shells and a road bike on top directly connected to a prop. That would have minimal drag, an optimal body positioning for using leg muscle strength, and would be fun and intuitive to pilot (facing forwards, feels like biking, etc). The obvious downside is that height above water may be an issue so the catamaran would have to be wide, but it seems solvable.
This device is US$310. Good carbon fins (the long ones for freediving) cost just a tiny bit more [1] and can also propel you at a superhuman speed. Plastic ones are even cheaper.
A speed comparison would have been nice. EDIT: it's already there: "This jigger, according to the manufacturers, makes you handily quicker than an equivalent swimmer with fins on."
Maybe the muscle movements are more natural and comfortable. Swimming with high power foot fins is probably as fast as this, but it gets very tiring real fast.
From the videos, not much IMO. Presumably the guys doing it in the videos have a fair amount of experience with it, and it looks... awkward.
Flippers have a great deal of fine control in all axis, and this doesn't look like it does. I'm a pretty fair diver, but when you see guys who dive all the time, they look like they were born with those flippers.
And free divers? I can't imagine them giving up their fins. They take advantage of the really long and strong muscles in the legs.
I live near a fairly dangerous ocean in SF where I’ve gone bodyboarding with a wetsuit and fins. I’m concerned that, if caught in a current, fins are not enough to propel me out of it.
This would. The extra power and ease of propulsion could make all the difference.
I guess the logistics of the thing make all the difference here. Is this something you can detach from a surfboard and equip while being carried out in choppy waters? Could be either really useful or useless depending on that answer
There's a DIY forum for building those[1] but I think tow boogies[2] are more practical as a project. The idea is a battery box, controller, and motor on a boogie board and shifting the weight of the person being towed allows for steering.
Since the original article is about human power, I'll also link to this foil[3] which is for pump foiling long distance. I had run across the channel well before that and thought his goal for a half hour was goofy when people were getting 90s or 2 minutes so I was quite shocked when it actually got built.
They're a toy being sold in small numbers to people who live near lakes or can fit driving to the lake with it into their life easily enough to want to buy it - good proxy for having a bit of disposable income to throw around. Market can bear a high price, not enough volume to make competition appealing => ££££
I spent a bit of time looking into building your own - from a parts point of view (buying new) you are still looking at £1000 to more like £2500 worth of batteries, controllers, motor and prop, plus the foil and the board you attach it all to. Then you need to make, seal it and make it 'sea worthy' - would be hundreds of hours of work for me.
I'd happily buy a well made new one for £3000 if that was what they cost, but half that price is a new good solid paddle board - so I can see why you can't get the same plus all the electronics you need for £3k.
We can hope in time the costs come down, but as a niche sport, it will be some time, if ever. Have you seen the cost (and service intervals!) of a new jet ski? All simple tech, but they don't come cheap and need a lot of looking after.
I'm curious how this compares to using fins. Just at a glance, I suspect it causes more drag and is more cumbersome to swim with. But the big thing is if it's more efficient overall than fins.
Id imagine this uses stronger muscle groups. Think about how much force you can make pushing down with your leg, compared to moving it forward or backwards when you are upright.
I still am puzzled about the logistics of it, at the very end of the video there's a sharp pointy end towards the user... do the user shove their private parts between the two shafts...
Anybody know why it is a cycling (circular) motion rather than a linear stepping motion? It looks like the apparatus has a strange rolling motion which needn't be as pronounced.
I've been looking at propulsion options for my sailing dinghy. Electric is heavy, expensive and I'd like to be able to capsize at will. Something like Hobie's mirage drive would be cool but it's another hole in the hull. I also saw a hand cranked propeller with a 3:1 ratio but that would make steering with the other hand awkward. I think I'll have to stick to oars for now
This can be another transportation option, like walking and biking infrastructure. Cities like Venice can offer this today. Other cities which will be underwater eventually will get this water infrastructure built for free.
on a bike, we don't use hands to propell ourselves for obvious reason, why they don't also put a crank for the hands too? it double its speed and you can counter balance the legs motion too.
Try holding your breath and just floating, arms at your side and legs not moving. You will bob to the surface. Then quickly release your breath and snap your neck back to take a new one. Repeat. That's all it takes to not drown. You could almost do it as a quadriplegic (though I'm not 100% on "water balance" in that case).
Some people (myself included) don’t float like this. I try basically every time I get in the water and my legs drift down to just after 45 degrees and then I slip under completely and don’t resurface until I give in and swim back up.
People who can float never believe me, but enough have now seen me in the water that I know I’m not “doing it wrong” I just don’t float.
The people who’ve seen me try it in water always say something along the lines of “huh, I thought everyone could float” we’ve done a few goes.
No, not all people are buoyant. Some people sink. I used to be able to float even with my lungs empty, but after losing 30kg I can now walk on the bottom of the pool will my lungs full of air.
Also, even if you are buoyant, it does not follow that being strapped to some device means you can't drown.
I noticed that too. Clipless pedals seem like they could be kind of stressful for someone not used to them. Or even someone who is, but is using them in a very unfamiliar situation.
clip-ons lock your feet to the device. If you find yourself needing to suddenly swim away from the device for any reason, you better hope that you can easily clip out. On a bicycle, you can do this fairly easily because you're on ground with gravity. In water, it could be much more challenging to clip out.
I mean swim fins also propel swimmers at superhuman speeds (aside, it would be really cool if there was a proper competitive community for stuff like that, like how on land we have races for runners and races for cyclists; edit: Google informs me the competitive sport has world championships and is called "finswimming"). Is there any quantitative comparison between this doodad and fins?
It doesn't even have convenience going for it since you have to strap into it, so it's probably almost as much of a ball-ache to put on as fins, plus the awkward problem that it's hard to stand up.
If they can make it work without the waist strap (or have super-quick disconnect for that strap) I could see that convenience being nice, but still, I'd like proper comparison with fins.
Finswimming appears to be a bit faster according to the 7.9km/h figure they give, and I think using a snorkel and not your arms would make the use of this thing quite more comfortable
I was thinking freediving as it requires less energy than flippers though I’m not sure the decreased maneuverability of having the thing attached to you would detract from what you are wanting to do when freediving. The article does say you can dive with it, though the devil is in the details eg how easy is it to turn around? I suspice it’s not nearly as easy as flippers
Another interesting use case would be just tossing one of these into a boat that you own, or a kayak or whatever. Basically extra insurance to get you back in case your motor dies or you get swept out, similar use case as the surfboard
What is apparent when you learn to try to swim is that the largest muscles in our body are rendered hugely irrelevant. I don't have exact number, but I'd guess at least 95% of potential power output of our running-optimized evolutionary muscular-skeletal design is wasted in swimming.
Maybe Phelps and others can beat that with decades of training from an early age, body shape advantages, long feet, and superior flexibility, but I'd guess they buy just 10% more advantage in power-> speed conversion from the legs.
Other examples are how much faster you can swim with flippers. I would actually like to see good swimmers who train to use full scuba flippers vs good swimmers with this bike contraption.
Yeah; I re-read that article couple of months ago. The core notion about submarine articles I find very valid and as Paul suggested, fun to discover.
But... internet has changed massively since then, I feel; both the authors and reader audience are different in demographic distribution. I don't much subscribe to the notion that "Internet is dead", I think "old internet" is still there, just about as large with just about same interested audience, for those who want it. It's merely been... superseded, supplanted, overwhelmed? Whatever the appropriate word is, from early quirky adopters to general mainstream and varied audience. Back to the point though - the trust level of online content I feel has been drastically reduced since Paul's article, and with the AI content generated feedback loop we're encountering as we speak, it may experience a sort of "crash" in trust / consumption / economic model. We'll see! :)
Super, sure, superhuman, no… someone running in shoes isn’t superhuman compared to someone in bare feet, anymore than someone using a block and tackle to lift or a wheelbarrow to transport is engaging in superhuman acts just because they’ve used their very human brain to leverage a simple machine.
Something like this expands the envelope of what is, definitionally, the realm of natural human capacity… it pushes what qualifies as superhuman further away, but it doesn’t mean you’ve done something superhuman.
Sure… and, notwithstanding the apples to oranges comparison — since I can outswim or out stair climb you when you’re on a bike any day of the week — that means you’re demonstrating how fast a human can turn a crank that a human has connected to a wheel that a human has realized will transfer traction into forward momentum; nothing remotely superhuman has occurred, your maximum speed with that implement is still entirely limited by your very normal human capabilities.
Actually you probably can’t, assuming you aren’t a world champion cyclist and you’re starting from a standstill. 100m is too short to capture the advantage unless you’re very, very fast.
The rotors should be placed in some fine mesh cage. I don't care what the manufacturer says, some idiot is going to cause an accident if safety isn't improved.
It’s obscure but there was such a contraption trialled by the seals and cia in the 1950s http://www.hisutton.com/CIA_Water-Air_1958.html
Here’s a pedal powered smuggling submarine from the 1940s http://www.hisutton.com/Swiss-Pedal-Powered-Smuggling-Submar...
Interesting that the CIA conclusion for a device very similar to the article is "Not recommended for operational use due to its discomfort and very slight gain in speed over that of a swimmer equipped with fins."
Toss a battery on it though and what does it look like then? Perhaps you're able to augment a human's ability to traverse longer distances more quickly. That's tech that didn't really exist back then!
5 replies →
Yeah I think for most uses I would still prefer fins for their agility. Cool idea though, and we probably haven't seen peak efficiency here.
18 replies →
probably should read "trained swimmer with fins"
It can take some time to get used to fins and the motions needed. Many more people have ridden a bike
13 replies →
"Wartime paddleboards" is not a phrase I ever expected to read.
Brings a new meaning to "Charlie don't surf". At this point though, you have to pretty much imagine that the military has researched any and every mode/method/means of achieving the goals of a mission. I'm sure roller blades and skateboards have been considered at some point as well.
2 replies →
My memory is fuzzy but I think the Australian SAS or SBS made raids on the Japanese using paddle boards in the Second World War.
It’s described in the H I Sutton book, from the website above, but I think it’s out of print now
H. L. Hunley (submarine)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_War_submarine
> French company Seabike
They have a .fr domain and a showroom in Cannes, France but the company is headquarted in Italy:
Also, the French version of the website is riddled with enormous errors, like "For traveling light" translated as "Pour voyager lumière", which does not make any sense and isn't even grammatically correct (the proper translation would be "Pour voyager léger").
The whole thing does not inspire a lot of confidence. Is the product real?
That's a really odd mistranslation, given the Italian words for lightweight and light source are as different as in french (leggero/a vs luce). Looks like it was translated directly from the English content.
It's so interesting how English tends to clump together so many concepts into the same word.
What, you don't like to travel bright?
> The nominal mode enables motion through the water at 3.6 km/h, and for speed-seekers, the SEABIKE can reach a maximum of 7.9 km/h – much faster than normal swimming speeds or even flipper-assisted swimming.
https://www.nauticexpo.com/prod/seabike/product-68606-564117...
Pretty fast, but "superhuman"? For short distances Michael Phelps can swim faster :)
Main difference is recruiting much larger muscles, so at some point most humans will be faster over a longer period with the widget. Let Phelps train with this for a couple months and he'd be faster. Although probably sad, because he likes swimming.
Michael Phelps is an alien..
Incorrect, he is an evolved dolphin.
2 replies →
For short distances Usain Bolt can run faster than most people can cycle.
For very, very short distances I can run faster than most people can cycle.
3 replies →
Usain Bolt is a superhuman
I’m skeptical because the limiting factor for a person using flippers is their lungs, and a propeller is less efficient for propulsion.
And their cardiovascular fitness and overall endurance
Traveling at that speed for a long distance would be beyond human capabilities, wouldn't it?
Super just means beyond, not way beyond. I blame Superman for this notion.
Not really. Most serious lap swimmers can do a kilometer every 20 minutes sustainably, akin to a marathon runner's pace (Sprint pace would be 100m/minute, with 50m/minute being what you would see in the fast lane of most recreational pools). So 3.6 kph isn't all that different, maybe a little faster than average but I assume they were also using a better-than-average bicycle person when doing the test.
There real advantage here is that you can use leg muscle. Distance swimming is all about upper body muscles, with legs being the afterburners only really used for sprinting. This machine would invert that arrangement.
15 replies →
Imagine how fast Phelps could swim with this!
Given that he optimized his training for swimming and not cycling I think he might do better with fins. His top speed of 7.2 - 9.6 km/h is freestyling without fins. He reached somewhere around 13 km/h using a Lunocet monofin.
I'd watch this
[flagged]
Would this device be even better if it has the newer efficient propeller design called MX-1 Sharrow Propeller ?
https://www.boatus.com/expert-advice/expert-advice-archive/2...
At the 2020 Miami International Boat Show, Philadelphia-based Sharrow Marine introduced the culmination of a seven-year research and development project called the MX-1 Sharrow Propeller. Unlike every prop that's come before it, rather than blades, the MX-1 has loops of metal attached to the hub.
How does this change the dynamic? In a nutshell, much of a prop's inefficiency can be blamed on the blade tips, where vortices and cavitation (commonly called tip vortex cavitation, or TVC) form, creating turbulence and sapping efficiency. Simply put, the loops on a Sharrow have no tips. The net result is an efficiency gain of between 9% and 15%. But just as important, eliminating the cavitation vastly reduces vibrations and noise and makes for a smoother, quieter boat ride.
Company president Greg Sharrow tells us that the development of the MX-1 can be credited to music videos.
"I was trying to solve the problem of reducing unwanted noise from drones while filming live music productions," he says. "I've always thought it would be cool to use a drone to get cameras closer to subjects and film them from onstage, but you can't use drones for music broadcasts because they're too noisy. I knew that most of the noise comes from the blade tips and is caused, in part, by tip vortices. So, I'd have to find a way to eliminate them."
I think for water, what you really want is to _breed_ cavitation, but in a way where the jets created by bubble collapse are arranged to face opposite your desired direction of motion. Kind of like Astrophage.
Cavitation for motorised propellors is to be avoided at all cost... a lot of engineering exists to do exactly this.
Cavitation is a destructive force and eats away at the edge & surface of the prop blades, making it VERY inefficient.
Good question! Boat motors spin a lot faster than the "Underwater bicycle" propeller would so perhaps it's not as beneficial here, but would be interesting to try.
Is that a press release?
Would it be a good idea to try on wind turbines?
Utility scale wind turbines are already about 50% efficient which is close to the theoretical limit of 59% (Betz limit). The loopy blades would be more expensive to manufacture and transport so there's a trade-off and it's not obvious that efficiency would win.
keep an eye on https://www.youtube.com/@rctestflight - they are doing 3d printed prop benchmark/competition and he already tested design you mentioned
"Seabike says the prop turns slowly enough that you can safely use it at the local pool"
Felt a bit iffy about this claim. But looking at the research it seems cadence lowers normally when cycling under water.[0] Fun device. I wonder which pedals would be best for barefoot riding(?). Maybe those strapped ones fix riders like to use.
[0] https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/23706
Good luck, many pools already ban fins (unless it's part of a training school, in which case the lanes are marked as such) due to risk potential.
Secondly, I could see this being used recreationally in the ocean, but in the local pool?!?
Yeah I wouldn't want to get hit in the face by those props at the pool. Accidents can always happen.
Flip turns would be clumsy at best.
1 reply →
They should also sell a model that includes a pair of fake feet that sort of kick at the surface to complete the illusion that you’re a freak of nature.
Cool. More like an underwater 'monocycle', though. Make it into a full body struct in Y shape acting as kind of both 'guidon' and secondary propulsion axis -- more blades, an underwater tricycle. :)
Is a Monocycle something different to a Unicycle?
Apparently! I did not expect such a nice find after asking search engine this:
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=1700041
> There are two main types of single-wheeled vehicles. In a unicycle, the rider sits above the wheel. These vehicles are recognizable by most people. Less well known is the monocycle, where the rider sits inside the wheel.
3 replies →
You must have missed this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40080406
I swim because I enjoy it, not because I'm trying to get somewhere fast.
This seems awkward and I bet you have to use your arms just to counterbalance the twist you'd get on each 'stroke' of the leg.
So even though I think it's goofy, I bet I'd like whoever came up with this. Someone who put a ton of effort into building something they thought would be interesting despite a thousand people telling them it's goofy.
Good on them.
> I swim because I enjoy it, not because I'm trying to get somewhere fast.
I run because I enjoy it, not because I’m trying to get somewhere fast. But I also bike because I enjoy it, not because I’m trying to get somewhere fast.
You seem to assume that because this thing is faster, it must automatically be less enjoyable. That’s not the case for bikes, why should it be the case here? In my opinion it sounds fun, and would probably be enjoyable.
Maybe not necessarily "faster" but there is an idea that adding any kind of technology should be avoided for recreational activities. For example, you can mountain bike with a fully-suspended e-bike, or you can struggle with a hardtail or even a road bike. Different kinds of fun, but in the former you'll wonder if it's the technology doing all the work.
7 replies →
That's a fair point. My (untested) assumption would be that it would be cumbersome and weird, and I wouldn't be 'swimming'.
If I were to guess at their motivations, it might be 'what could make me go faster in the water and also be enjoyable'? I'd try it out of curiosity, sure, but I'm pretty sure it wouldn't last beyond the novelty for me.
2 replies →
>You seem to assume that because this thing is faster, it must automatically be less enjoyable.
The problem in this case is that the device is doing part of the swimming for you.
4 replies →
Running does make pedestrian locomotion more tolerable. Save me some money versus using electric scooters though I think electric scooters are still faster.
But if you wanted to swim fast you could just use flippers, and be much more agile.
2 replies →
Fixed gear bikes are the most fun so it kinda is true of bikes.
My favorite way to swim is with those flippers - because I go fast.
Going fast doesnt mean not enjoying it.
Yep, going fast with flippers feels great.
3 replies →
It's pretty neat. I'd want to try a version with a linear motion that drives the propeller for the counterbalance reasons.
I could see this as an alternative to fins offered at snorkeling places. That would make a great test environment too.
I come from family of scuba divers, and the scuba divers are a perfect market for this I think - pretty rich, pretty lazy and have to cover a lot of distance underwater
My wife and I rented the double subnado things last time we were out of town diving. Seems that fits the pretty rich and lazy market much better.
1 reply →
Personally I hate swimming though I kind of like being in water, moving. So I'd definitely benefit from this, if it worked etc.
Balancing this device must have been a good problem to solve! All I can think of is “where does the other end that stick go?”
Two propellers spin in different directions might solve it I guess
2 replies →
Your blow hole, clearly
If you live somewhere with currents, it could be good to be able to swim at all.
The real question here is about efficiency, not speed. If this does in fact propel divers more efficiently than traditional fins, it could be something useful in extending dive times without the battery limitations of a sea scooter. Otherwise it's just a gimmick.
From the looks of the scuba diving video, it looks worse. There's way more leg movement and it looks less controlled (and more likely to damage corals/kick up sand from the bottom) than slow finning.
Given the number of times I've been kicked in the face by another person's fins while scuba diving, I wouldn't want to be anywhere near someone using one of these.
Looks fun until both your regs are wrapped around the prop six times.
I'm inclined to agree with you.
That said this certainly has its place. There are lots of use cases for wanting to swim more quickly through the water, where precise control is less important and where you aren't right next to fragile life.
[dead]
I wonder how monofins compare as "swimming" method, similar, slower or faster? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBsjtSjQEjM
It certainly has lower energy losses than this geared setup.
I wish we could find a good way to bike over the surface of the water. I haven’t seen anything that’s not slow and cumbersome.
Hydrofoil bike:
https://manta5.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heSPbLHftKw
That's battery powered though, and looks pretty heavy. I think I'd sooner go for one of these https://liftfoils.com/
Foil boards are getting semi-popular for kiteboarding. They can be self-powered as well using a jumping motion. They also make e-foils with small electric props.
https://www.google.com/search?q=foil+board
Anything you choose will be cumbersome because you can't create friction on the water (well...), your ability to move is based on your ability to move water around you.
There are solutions that leverage a pair of catamarans and a track system, or a prop. These tend to move very slowly, much slower than a canoe or kayak. The water wheel style systems seem to move faster, but you can just get a pedal kayak and will be the fastest human powered craft on the water.
I've always wondered why nobody has created something that looks like a catamaran with two rowing shells and a road bike on top directly connected to a prop. That would have minimal drag, an optimal body positioning for using leg muscle strength, and would be fun and intuitive to pilot (facing forwards, feels like biking, etc). The obvious downside is that height above water may be an issue so the catamaran would have to be wide, but it seems solvable.
4 replies →
I can only imagine this is slow and cumbersome, but I love the idea of it working with your existing bike: https://www.shuttlebike.com/en/
This device is US$310. Good carbon fins (the long ones for freediving) cost just a tiny bit more [1] and can also propel you at a superhuman speed. Plastic ones are even cheaper.
A speed comparison would have been nice. EDIT: it's already there: "This jigger, according to the manufacturers, makes you handily quicker than an equivalent swimmer with fins on."
[1] https://www.westmarine.com/mares-razor-carbon-dive-fins-41-1...
And this device is made as cheaply as possible. Plastic everywhere, holes for adaptability... And it's supposed to be used in sea water.
I guess the actual plan is to sell classes by taking advantage of the novelty effect.
Why wasn't this device invented 100 years ago? It's like a bicycle for people who need to swim to get around.
Hey now, it's clearly a unicycle.
What's the advantage of this over foot fins?
I think it uses much stronger muscle groups.
Maybe the muscle movements are more natural and comfortable. Swimming with high power foot fins is probably as fast as this, but it gets very tiring real fast.
1 reply →
From the videos, not much IMO. Presumably the guys doing it in the videos have a fair amount of experience with it, and it looks... awkward.
Flippers have a great deal of fine control in all axis, and this doesn't look like it does. I'm a pretty fair diver, but when you see guys who dive all the time, they look like they were born with those flippers.
And free divers? I can't imagine them giving up their fins. They take advantage of the really long and strong muscles in the legs.
I can think of a huge one.
I live near a fairly dangerous ocean in SF where I’ve gone bodyboarding with a wetsuit and fins. I’m concerned that, if caught in a current, fins are not enough to propel me out of it.
This would. The extra power and ease of propulsion could make all the difference.
I guess the logistics of the thing make all the difference here. Is this something you can detach from a surfboard and equip while being carried out in choppy waters? Could be either really useful or useless depending on that answer
You just need to get familiar with the correct way to handle a current like that. It’s not to fight it.
Especially with a bodyboard and fins doing the right thing does not require a ton of strength and shouldn’t be stressful.
3 replies →
Didn't look to go much faster in the video than what I can do with my freediving fins.
> This jigger, according to the manufacturers, makes you handily quicker than an equivalent swimmer with fins on.
It's slower, more expensive and less accessible than a monofin
There are a bunch of small watercraft I really want to try. It’s hard to justify the expensive.
The hydrofoil board with a prop and motor looks really cool.
Just not sure what the learning curve is like and kind of worried about hitting something and flying off.
There's a DIY forum for building those[1] but I think tow boogies[2] are more practical as a project. The idea is a battery box, controller, and motor on a boogie board and shifting the weight of the person being towed allows for steering.
[1] https://foil.zone/ [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9z6BP8Y42U
Since the original article is about human power, I'll also link to this foil[3] which is for pump foiling long distance. I had run across the channel well before that and thought his goal for a half hour was goofy when people were getting 90s or 2 minutes so I was quite shocked when it actually got built.
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfJbF0xkUOY
Those e-foil look amazing, but the prices on them are insane. Like multiple times the price of an e-bike.
I, frankly, don’t understand it. They aren’t particularly advanced devices.
They're a toy being sold in small numbers to people who live near lakes or can fit driving to the lake with it into their life easily enough to want to buy it - good proxy for having a bit of disposable income to throw around. Market can bear a high price, not enough volume to make competition appealing => ££££
I spent a bit of time looking into building your own - from a parts point of view (buying new) you are still looking at £1000 to more like £2500 worth of batteries, controllers, motor and prop, plus the foil and the board you attach it all to. Then you need to make, seal it and make it 'sea worthy' - would be hundreds of hours of work for me.
I'd happily buy a well made new one for £3000 if that was what they cost, but half that price is a new good solid paddle board - so I can see why you can't get the same plus all the electronics you need for £3k.
We can hope in time the costs come down, but as a niche sport, it will be some time, if ever. Have you seen the cost (and service intervals!) of a new jet ski? All simple tech, but they don't come cheap and need a lot of looking after.
I can still dream though.
I'm curious how this compares to using fins. Just at a glance, I suspect it causes more drag and is more cumbersome to swim with. But the big thing is if it's more efficient overall than fins.
Id imagine this uses stronger muscle groups. Think about how much force you can make pushing down with your leg, compared to moving it forward or backwards when you are upright.
Looks a more uncomfortable than the fins (especially the lumbar lordosis part) but I imagine this should be way faster than fins.
> This jigger, according to the manufacturers, makes you handily quicker than an equivalent swimmer with fins on.
I still am puzzled about the logistics of it, at the very end of the video there's a sharp pointy end towards the user... do the user shove their private parts between the two shafts...
It plugs into a contraption that goes around your waste: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C6RVpqLpLjl/?igsh=MzRlODBiNWF...
Anybody know why it is a cycling (circular) motion rather than a linear stepping motion? It looks like the apparatus has a strange rolling motion which needn't be as pronounced.
I've been looking at propulsion options for my sailing dinghy. Electric is heavy, expensive and I'd like to be able to capsize at will. Something like Hobie's mirage drive would be cool but it's another hole in the hull. I also saw a hand cranked propeller with a 3:1 ratio but that would make steering with the other hand awkward. I think I'll have to stick to oars for now
Pairing this with some sort of foil board contraption would be interesting. Once you get up and out of the water on a foil, it's a lot less effort.
Ah, you mean these: https://manta5.com
Yeah, it exists.
Bingo!
There was Australian underwater breathing device, which used your leg movement as only powersource. As I recall it could do 5 meters.
Very splendid, except some dozen people managed to misuse it. Diving deeper and without small emergency bottle.
So it was banned for all eternity everywhere. Even Chinese have not rekindled this product.
For those like me who are curious what it looks like: https://www.designboom.com/technology/exolung-underwater-air...
The idea of using transparent container maybe a good idea. Some indicator when you are sucking only water.
Because I am fool, I tried to make my own. But gave up because breakages were indicated only by lung full of water, which tend to be fatal.
Kangaroos! Tragatschnig is Austrian, not Australian.
Original version was in 1988. I was bicycling Australia at the time and saw it on TV.
Could have been Austrian invention anyways, perhaps?
I'd give it a try, but the "crotch rod" mounting strategy looks awfully uncomfortable.
Engineering students have been building "underwater bicycles" for human-powered submarine competitions for decades!
https://internationalsubmarineraces.org/
The male could also use this to improve dispersion of milt over the roe laid by the female.
Please send a message to the manufacturer asking for a free product sample to try this out on a public beach.
This can be another transportation option, like walking and biking infrastructure. Cities like Venice can offer this today. Other cities which will be underwater eventually will get this water infrastructure built for free.
Human-powered flying cars are next. Peter Thiel will invest billions.
2013: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human-powered_helicopter
They have plenty of demo videos on their channel dating as far back as 6 years
https://m.youtube.com/@seabikeofficial9914
Operator skill level aside, how does this compare to the fish kick?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_kick
on a bike, we don't use hands to propell ourselves for obvious reason, why they don't also put a crank for the hands too? it double its speed and you can counter balance the legs motion too.
Probably attitude control. If your hands are connected to the machine, you've got no control surfaces left.
At first glance, the idea of clip-ons in the water seems quite dangerous.
Really, why? Because you might drown?
Try holding your breath and just floating, arms at your side and legs not moving. You will bob to the surface. Then quickly release your breath and snap your neck back to take a new one. Repeat. That's all it takes to not drown. You could almost do it as a quadriplegic (though I'm not 100% on "water balance" in that case).
Some people (myself included) don’t float like this. I try basically every time I get in the water and my legs drift down to just after 45 degrees and then I slip under completely and don’t resurface until I give in and swim back up.
People who can float never believe me, but enough have now seen me in the water that I know I’m not “doing it wrong” I just don’t float.
The people who’ve seen me try it in water always say something along the lines of “huh, I thought everyone could float” we’ve done a few goes.
Most people float, I’m just not one of them.
10 replies →
No, not all people are buoyant. Some people sink. I used to be able to float even with my lungs empty, but after losing 30kg I can now walk on the bottom of the pool will my lungs full of air.
Also, even if you are buoyant, it does not follow that being strapped to some device means you can't drown.
This is not true if your feet are clipped to an object heavy enough to keep you under the water though
2 replies →
I noticed that too. Clipless pedals seem like they could be kind of stressful for someone not used to them. Or even someone who is, but is using them in a very unfamiliar situation.
Especially clipping your feet to a bouyant device!
Better than clipping them to a non-buoyant device. Or worse, the classic cement overshoes.
1 reply →
Can you elaborate on that?
clip-ons lock your feet to the device. If you find yourself needing to suddenly swim away from the device for any reason, you better hope that you can easily clip out. On a bicycle, you can do this fairly easily because you're on ground with gravity. In water, it could be much more challenging to clip out.
1 reply →
How should one take a turn in a swimming pool with this?
Avec difficulte'!
Design engineer: "Turns? Turns?!"
Cool invention, kinda like the foil though seems a little ridiculous.
Is it really faster than flippers? Didn't seem that quick in the video.
I mean swim fins also propel swimmers at superhuman speeds (aside, it would be really cool if there was a proper competitive community for stuff like that, like how on land we have races for runners and races for cyclists; edit: Google informs me the competitive sport has world championships and is called "finswimming"). Is there any quantitative comparison between this doodad and fins?
It doesn't even have convenience going for it since you have to strap into it, so it's probably almost as much of a ball-ache to put on as fins, plus the awkward problem that it's hard to stand up.
If they can make it work without the waist strap (or have super-quick disconnect for that strap) I could see that convenience being nice, but still, I'd like proper comparison with fins.
Finswimming appears to be a bit faster according to the 7.9km/h figure they give, and I think using a snorkel and not your arms would make the use of this thing quite more comfortable
For those wondering... the tip hooks onto a belt... I had the same reaction.
They definitely could make it a lot more clear in the images.
Seems prime for attaching to a surfboard
I was thinking freediving as it requires less energy than flippers though I’m not sure the decreased maneuverability of having the thing attached to you would detract from what you are wanting to do when freediving. The article does say you can dive with it, though the devil is in the details eg how easy is it to turn around? I suspice it’s not nearly as easy as flippers
Another interesting use case would be just tossing one of these into a boat that you own, or a kayak or whatever. Basically extra insurance to get you back in case your motor dies or you get swept out, similar use case as the surfboard
Ever see a fishing lure called a "spinner"?
In the ocean this could attract some very sizable predators . . .
Looks like you could use it to go in reverse, which I sometimes want while scuba diving.
Great for special forces, I guess.
Looks like a shark cutting through the water, incredibly smooth and fast!
How long till this is fitted with a motor, an e-propeller :)
There’s already plenty of electric underwater scooters on the market. This is novel because it’s not electric.
True! I realised this a while after I wrote the comment, d'oh!
Looks so cool. Really want to try it
Holy shit.
What is apparent when you learn to try to swim is that the largest muscles in our body are rendered hugely irrelevant. I don't have exact number, but I'd guess at least 95% of potential power output of our running-optimized evolutionary muscular-skeletal design is wasted in swimming.
Maybe Phelps and others can beat that with decades of training from an early age, body shape advantages, long feet, and superior flexibility, but I'd guess they buy just 10% more advantage in power-> speed conversion from the legs.
Other examples are how much faster you can swim with flippers. I would actually like to see good swimmers who train to use full scuba flippers vs good swimmers with this bike contraption.
This is hilariously efficient compared to that.
Motorized propellers have existed for 20+ years and are routinely used in spearfishing. What the heck is the news!? https://www.amazon.com/Nautica-Skipper-Seascooter/dp/B0BLP9Z...
What about non-motorised propellers?
I’ve always wished those were slightly cheaper and slightly faster.
4mph and under $250 and I’m sold!
I assume that now that we're in the world of hyper-cheap batteries I'm sure we'll see somebody do that soon enough.
Now just need a way to keep your head out of the water besides turning to the sides
Imagine a pro cycler with one of these
2/3 of a triathlon.
[flagged]
[flagged]
> Whatever its flaws, the writing you find online is authentic
That aged like milk.
Yeah; I re-read that article couple of months ago. The core notion about submarine articles I find very valid and as Paul suggested, fun to discover.
But... internet has changed massively since then, I feel; both the authors and reader audience are different in demographic distribution. I don't much subscribe to the notion that "Internet is dead", I think "old internet" is still there, just about as large with just about same interested audience, for those who want it. It's merely been... superseded, supplanted, overwhelmed? Whatever the appropriate word is, from early quirky adopters to general mainstream and varied audience. Back to the point though - the trust level of online content I feel has been drastically reduced since Paul's article, and with the AI content generated feedback loop we're encountering as we speak, it may experience a sort of "crash" in trust / consumption / economic model. We'll see! :)
Maybe a PR firm reached out to have this article made, but I somehow doubt that there's a large media conspiracy behind this quirky invention.
If it’s powered exclusively by a human then whatever the results, they’re not “superhuman”.
Super == above, over, beyond.
If it augments the human's capabilities, it's definitely super!
Super, sure, superhuman, no… someone running in shoes isn’t superhuman compared to someone in bare feet, anymore than someone using a block and tackle to lift or a wheelbarrow to transport is engaging in superhuman acts just because they’ve used their very human brain to leverage a simple machine.
Something like this expands the envelope of what is, definitionally, the realm of natural human capacity… it pushes what qualifies as superhuman further away, but it doesn’t mean you’ve done something superhuman.
with my bike I can easily outrun any 100m dasher on the earth.
Sure… and, notwithstanding the apples to oranges comparison — since I can outswim or out stair climb you when you’re on a bike any day of the week — that means you’re demonstrating how fast a human can turn a crank that a human has connected to a wheel that a human has realized will transfer traction into forward momentum; nothing remotely superhuman has occurred, your maximum speed with that implement is still entirely limited by your very normal human capabilities.
Actually you probably can’t, assuming you aren’t a world champion cyclist and you’re starting from a standstill. 100m is too short to capture the advantage unless you’re very, very fast.
See: https://www.outsideonline.com/uncategorized/who-would-win-10...
The rotors should be placed in some fine mesh cage. I don't care what the manufacturer says, some idiot is going to cause an accident if safety isn't improved.
> 'Underwater bicycle' propels swimmers forward at superhuman speed
so... like a normal bicycle then.